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Hitt’s Granville roots run deep

Ohio
Published 12:06 a.m. ET April 20, 2016

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Vince Hitt sits in the cab of his John Deere with his dog Happy outside of their home at the corner of Ohio 16 and Goose Lane.(Photo: Michael Lehmkuhle/The Advocate)Buy Photo

With deep roots that go back to at least the mid-1800s, Hitt has lived on the family homestead near the intersection of what is now Ohio 16 and Silver Street/Goose Lane all his life — except for his time in the U.S. Air Force.

“They were here before 1850,” Hitt said of his ancestors. “That’s as far back as I could trace them at the court house.”

Hitt, now 72, doesn’t know exactly who or when the first Hitts arrived in the area, although he thinks they came from New York. He does know in 1866 his great great uncle Hiram Hitt owned a general store in Granville. He, along with his brother Warren Hitt — Vince’s great great grandfather — owned 100 acres near the intersection.

“They owned the property together until 1870 when my great great grandfather bought Hiram out,” Hitt said.

Today it’s still farmland. There’s also a barn and a house that was once a one-room school called the Hitt School.

Today, the school is the house at 3037 Silver Street. The barn was moved to its current location in 1954 when changes were made to Ohio 16. The barn is still somewhat in use today, but at one time it was the centerpiece of Hitt’s Stable, a riding stable until 1975.

“I guess you could say I grew up out there,” said Lynn Connelly of Granville. “As a child, horses were my first love, so it was like my second home. I’d stay most of the day. I became a fixture out there. It was a good place to grow up.”

Hitt’s father, Vince Hitt Sr., also sold horses at the stable. “Most anybody of any age in this entire area knew my dad’s name,” Hitt said. “Most of the old-timers bought horses from him.”

“What kind of amazes me,” Hitt continued, “is when I was young I always had to come home and take care of the horses. I didn’t get to do many activities sports-wise at school and I kind of thought I was cheated a little bit. But after I got to be about 13 or 14 years old, and we had all these horses out here, well, those horses attracted a lot of pretty girls. So from then on, I wasn’t upset at all.”

Hitt graduated from Granville High School in 1962, when it was in the building on Granger Street now occupied by the school district offices.

“One thing that hasn’t changed that much is the Aladdin restaurant,” Hitt said. “I remember going in there in the ’50s when I was in school. We had a deal at 11:35, three or four of us met there for lunch and they had it ready. We’d eat and then walk back to school.”

The tranquility would soon end. The Vietnam War was ramping up so he enlisted in the Air Force. He spent much of his time between the Philippines and Vietnam. He worked as a mechanic on C 130 airplanes.

“I was there when the Tet Offensive of ’68 happened,” he said. “They didn’t come right into the middle of Saigon, but it got a little hairy there during that period. Once and a while, they’d lob a rocket or two out on the perimeter but it didn’t bother me any. All in all it wasn’t bad duty for being in a combat zone.”

In fact, he added “Looking back on it now it was probably the best four years of my life. I had the best experience I could have possibly had.”

Hitt returned to Granville in 1968 to find his father in poor health. He passed away a couple years later.

“I kept the horses going for about five years but that just wasn’t my thing. That was his thing,” Hitt said. “I needed to find my own way, so I got into being a mechanic.” He worked on cars for the next three decades at various dealerships in Newark and Columbus.

Now retired, Hitt, a lifelong bachelor, said he thinks about his roots every now and then.

“I really don’t go into Granville too often,” he said of the current village. “It’s mind boggling, the changes in my lifetime.”